Mother Mary said at Fatima: "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the sure way which will lead you to God." St. Thomas Aquinas said: "The things we love tell us who we are!" With that in mind, I will try to post each day something about Our Blessed Lady, items about the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and public domain Catholic books too! I pray you enjoy my ministry!
Below are two albums of pictures that I created:
1. Our grand daughter Adrianna.
2. Tears of Mary!

MARY, OUR MOTHER

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Twelve Years of 9/11: Jihad and Our Struggle with Ourselves By Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

The Jihad against America and Western Culture is closer to home than you think.

Twelve years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on
America, we are engaged in a jihad within ourselves as persons, as a
people, and as a nation.I promise to keep this post brief because I want to invite TSW
readers to visit anew the events of September 11, 2001 from a most
unusual vantage point. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, These Stone
Walls posted “September 11, 2001: An Account of that Day You Haven’t Heard.”What prompted me to write it was a letter to the editor from the
wife of a prison guard published in a prominent Catholic newspaper. The
letter claimed that prisoners in U.S. prisons cheered for the 9/11
terrorists on that terrible day in 2001. That was far from the truth.But there is another reason why I’m bringing that post up again on
the twelfth anniversary of 9/11. It has to do with the Islamic concept
of “jihad.” The prosecution of a jihad, when summoned, is described as a
sacred duty in the Koran and in Islamic tradition. A jihad is
traditionally undertaken to defend Islam against perceived external
threats. On September 11, 2001, a fundamentalist and radical Islamic
culture commenced a jihad against the United States and its allies,
forever changing the notion of America as an open society.In Arabic, “jihad” usually refers to a Holy War, but it also has
another meaning: “struggle.” It is defined as a struggle within one’s
self, a struggle with the cause of God, or a struggle with self against
resistance to the rule of divine law. In the Book of Genesis, the name
“Israel” means “one who struggles with God.” The name was bestowed on
Jacob, son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, after a night of struggle
with a divine presence: “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but
Israel, for you have struggled with God and with humans, and have
prevailed.” (Genesis 32:28)Humankind has been struggling with God ever since, and the
struggles of this post-9/11 world are with hopelessness, despair, and –
far more dangerous – secularism. Our cultural plunge toward secularism
has taken on the tone of a jihad, dismissing religion and faith as
social ills rather than as pillars of our culture.As I sat down to type this post today, the news media is covering
the story of a Massachusetts couple who have filed a lawsuit to end the
recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in local schools. At issue are
the words, “one nation under God.” Those words were added to the Pledge
of Allegiance by decree of a joint session of Congress in 1954. In their
lawsuit, the couple claims that the words “under God” are a violation
of their children’s First Amendment right to freedom from religion.News stories like this define America for the Islamic world as the
infidels we are already suspected to be. But far more importantly, they
reflect a struggle within ourselves between individual rights and the
good of society. The social agendas that have so roiled religion in
Western Culture – abortion as a “reproductive rite,” same sex marriage,
the airbrushing of God from the face of culture – all stem from a
reading of individual “rights” that trump the rights of the many and
take precedence over the collective social good.THE FLAG AND THE CROSSNot all liberals are having it. In a remarkable column in The Wall Street Journal (“A Liberal Catholic and Staying Put,”
August 30, 2013) author and journalism professor, Paul Moses told the
world why the secularist trend has failed to lure him from his Catholic
faith. Mr. Moses is the author of The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace (Doubleday 2009).A self-professed “liberal Catholic,” Paul Moses cited a full-page ad in The New York Times
last year that was aimed at persuading left-leaning Catholics to “quit
the Catholic Church.” The ad was sponsored by the Freedom From Religion
Foundation, the same people trumpeting the removal of “under God” from
the American Pledge of Allegiance. Paul Moses also cited columnist Bill
Keller who wrote a column for The New York Times urging liberal-minded Catholics to “Summon your fortitude and just go.”Paul Moses went on in his column to make a case for how the
abandonment of religion and faith are not only contrary to the best
interests of Catholics, but contrary to the interests of culture and
society as well. Our jihad – our struggle with God and the rules of
divine law within ourselves – is not resolved by abandoning our faith.On September 4 last week, CNN aired a fascinating 90-minute
broadcast of “The Flag,” about the fate of one of the enduring symbols
of 9/11. Nancy Dewolf Smith had an excellent review of it entitled “Where Is That 9/11 Flag Now?” (The Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2013) I was surprised to see when revisiting my post, “September 11, 2001: An Account of That Day You Haven’t Heard” that it had a photograph of that very flag hoisted above the rubble on 9/11.It wasn’t the only symbol of that day to become what Nancy Dewolf
Smith calls “A classic cultural mystery.” Two sections of iron support
beam appeared in the rubble in the form of a cross. We all remember
seeing it. We all remember holding onto its meaning, reaching deeply
into our well of faith to give it meaning, and impart some of that
meaning to the national disaster that unfolded before our eyes. All of
America seemed to turn to faith in a personal jihad – a struggle – to
make sense of this, and to calm the fear to which it gave birth. Even
the Freedom From Religion Foundation had the good sense to wait for the
nation to catch its breath before demanding the removal of that
“accidental” cross.After considering the above, I went to my TSW post published on
the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 jihad on America. I realized that as I
described that day from my own unusual vantage point – from inside
prison walls – I arrived at the very same points made by Paul Moses.
Secularization is our surrender to jihad. It marks the end of our
struggle with God, and it writes the epitaph for America.Sometime this week, as we mark the twelfth anniversary of the terrorist attack upon America, please read anew: “September 11, 2001: An Account of That Day You Haven’t Heard.”

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My wife Marianne suffered a heart attack on March 13th, 2012. On 7/23/2013, she suffered a stroke and was hospitalized for over 3 weeks. On 8/9/2013, Marianne went to the Lord. May she rest in Peace+Deacon John

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Quotes from 'The Glories of Mary':

‘I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head.’

(Gen. 3:15)

“Since the devil is the head of original sin, this head it was that Mary crushed: for sin never had any entry into the soul of this Blessed Virgin, which was consequently free from all stain.”

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MARY, OUR MOTHER

Mother Mary said at Fatima: "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the sure way which will lead you to God." With that in mind, I will try to post each day something about Our Blessed Lady, items about the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and public domain Catholic books too! I pray you enjoy my ministry!Below is a slide show of pictures that I have collected: Tears of Mary!

Have a look!

Jeremiah 14:17; 15:18

"Let my eyes shed down tears night and day, and let them not cease, because the Virgin daughter of my people is afflicted with an exceedingly grievous evil. / Why is my sorrow become perpetual, and my wound desperate so as to refuse to be healed?"

Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia, et ubi ecclesia vita eterna

Where Peter is, there is the Church, where the Church is there is Eternal Life

About Me

I'm 80, formally married to Marianne for 52 years, [Marianne passed away to the Lord on August 9th, 2013 after suffering a stroke and two cardiac arrests.] We have 4 children (plus 2 in heaven-stillborn) and nine grandchildren plus 1 Step-grandchild. I'm a Korean War Vet, U.S. Navy; I was a Motorcycle News Courier for U.P.I., and WNEW Chanel 5 TV News, during 60's & 70's; a Lieutenant in the Wycoff Hospital Police in the 90's. I was ordained a Permanent Deacon for the Brooklyn Diocese on April 25, 1987 and served in four parishes before relocating to Florida in 2002. I'm still incardinated for Brooklyn Diocese. There was no parish in my town so we traveled to either Mt. Dora or Eustis for Mass. My oldest son and daughter, John and Anne, lived near us but the rest of the gang are up North in New York and Pennsylvania. We have now relocated to a northern state and my ministry is mostly on the Internet with some blogs and groups. I also assist the pastor at the local Catholic church. I owe my life and conversion/calling to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel de Garabandal, who has brought me to her Son Jesus. I am Their servant and slave! I only want to do the Will of God and glorify the Most Blessed Trinity with my life!

My Friend Archbishop David Milne

PSALM 71 SPEAKS TO MY HEART

Forsake Me Not When My Strength Is Spent

In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;let me never be put to shame!In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;incline your ear to me, and save me!

Be to me a rock of refuge,to which I may continually come;you have given the command to save me,for you are my rock and my fortress.

Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.For you, O Lord, are my hope,my trust, O Lord, from my youth.Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;you are he who took me from my mother's womb.My praise is continually of you.

I have been as a portent to many,but you are my strong refuge.My mouth is filled with your praise,and with your glory all the day.Do not cast me off in the time of old age;forsake me not when my strength is spent.

For my enemies speak concerning me;those who watch for my life consult togetherand say, “God has forsaken him;pursue and seize him,for there is none to deliver him.”

O God, be not far from me;O my God, make haste to help me!May my accusers be put to shame and consumed;with scorn and disgrace may they be coveredwho seek my hurt.

But I will hope continuallyand will praise you yet more and more.My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,of your deeds of salvation all the day,for their number is past my knowledge.

With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come;I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.

O God, from my youth you have taught me,and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.

So even to old age and gray hairs,O God, do not forsake me,until I proclaim your might to another generation,your power to all those to come.Your righteousness, O God,reaches the high heavens.You who have done great things,O God, who is like you?

You who have made me see many troubles and calamitieswill revive me again;from the depths of the earthyou will bring me up again.You will increase my greatnessand comfort me again.

I will also praise you with the harpfor your faithfulness, O my God;I will sing praises to you with the lyre,O Holy One of Israel.My lips will shout for joy,when I sing praises to you;my soul also, which you have redeemed.

And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long, for they have been put to shame and disappointedwho sought to do me hurt.

Welcome to my Marian Blog

As you can tell from my postings, I'm in love with Mother Mary, who has taken me under her mantle of protection, has taught and led me to Her Divine Son, Jesus; Who in turn has led me, in the Holy Spirit, to the Eternal Father! Two prayers that I say often tell who I am:Come O Holy Spirit; Come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your well-beloved Spouse.

O Most Holy Trinity, I adore Thee. My God, my God, I love Thee in the Most Blessed Sacrament.